


Her Mother's Brains

by iseult_11



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Expectations, Family Fluff, Gen, Weasley Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-07
Updated: 2016-11-07
Packaged: 2018-08-29 18:02:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,926
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8499793
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iseult_11/pseuds/iseult_11
Summary: When Rose fails her History of Magic final exam, she knows that her parents can never find out.





	

Her History of Magic examination had been a disaster. She knew it would be, from the very moment she sat down at the desk and read the first question.   
Rose Granger-Weasley simply could not fail an exam. When she had been standing on the platform, inwardly terrified to leave her family for Hogwarts, her father had uttered a simple sentence—one that she hoped was true, desperately wanted to be true, but one that she feared was merely wishful thinking.  
“Make sure you beat him in every test, Rosie,” he had told her. “Thank God you’ve inherited your mother’s brains.”  
Well, Hermione Granger had never failed an exam, of that Rose was sure. She had achieved 11 N.E.W.T.s when she returned to Hogwarts the year after the war, and here was Rose, who’d likely just failed her first-year History of Magic exam.  
She fled the classroom the instant Professor Binns had collected their parchments and went straight to Moaning Myrtle’s bathroom to have a good cry. Myrtle’s bathroom was the best place to cry, because the ghost would sob right along with you until you’d gotten it all out of your system. Rose never told anyone, but she’d considered Myrtle a good friend ever since her first bout of homesickness had caused her to burst into tears at least twice a day and she’d needed to find a place where no one would judge her for such un-Granger-Weasley-ish behavior.  
“Why are you crying?” Myrtle asked when Rose skidded into the bathroom fresh from her test, the ghost’s voice already tremulous.   
“I failed my exam, and I haven’t got my mother’s brains after all, and they’re going to be so disappointed in me!” Rose wailed.   
She and Myrtle cried together for a quarter of an hour until Myrtle asked, pausing with a flicker of glee, “Do you think your brother might be smarter than you? Are you worried he might show you up in school when he comes?”  
Rose stopped crying immediately, a wonderful idea occurring to her. “Hugo! Myrtle, you’re a genius!”  
“I am?” Myrtle asked, looking pleased. “Of course I am. You don’t hang around a school for as long as I have without picking up a few things, you know.”  
Rose decided not to point out that Myrtle mostly hung around the toilet, where not much learning occurred, and instead said, “I’ve got to write Hugo at once, Myrtle. I’ll visit you again soon!” And with that, she dashed from the room, down the corridor, up the stairs, and on until she reached the Owlery.   
“Chudley,” she called, pulling a piece of parchment from her bag, along with her special self-inking quill that her father had given her. Her owl, who she had named for her father’s favorite Quidditch team, swooped down to land on her shoulder while she wrote a letter to her little brother, instructing him in no uncertain terms that he was to intercept the mail until examination results were delivered to her family home, which she knew would be a few days before she returned for summer holiday. When the results were delivered, he was to throw the letter straight in the fire, she told him. If he did, she’d give him half her stash of Honeydukes candies that Victoire always brought her from Hogsmeade. If the results came into the possession of their parents, she swore to eat the whole bag in front of him and not share a piece.  
She signed the letter, then, as an afterthought, added a postscript asking Hugo how he was.  
Chudley had grown bored on her shoulder while she was writing, and had hopped on top of her head. She reached up to affix the letter to his leg, and he took off, his talons digging rather painfully into her scalp as he did so.   
Now, she could do nothing but wait. 

Term results were released the day before the train was set to depart from Hogsmeade. Rose had, predictably, achieved top scores in all of her classes… except, of course, for History of Magic. Her essays had buoyed her dismal exam score, so she would not have to repeat the first-year coursework (Thank Merlin) but it was a close call, far too close, and she was in the bottom third of the class for her scores. As she looked at her name, so far down the list, she felt her ears heating up and tears pricking the back of her eyes. She took a deep breath. She was top of the class in everything else, and who cared about History of Magic anyway?  
She did. She cared very much.   
The only silver lining was that Hugo had sent Chudley back affirming that he would hide the scores from their parents, and informing her that, as part of his Honeydukes share, he would be taking all of the Pepper Imps to impress his Muggle friends. Rose wondered if, by doing so, she would be complicit in breaking the Statute of Secrecy, but decided it was a risk she simply must take.   
At first, when she stepped off the train to meet her family, it seemed like everything was going according to plan. Her parents were too delighted to see her after all their months apart to interrogate her about her missing scores, and Hugo diverted the conversation by chattering excitedly about the Quidditch league standings. Ron had taken him to a Cannon’s game in the spring, and Hugo was obsessed, despite being even more uncoordinated on a broom than he was on foot, which, Rose thought, was quite a feat in itself.   
The drive back from London was pleasant enough, even if Rose still wasn’t entirely certain how her father had managed to pass his driving test the previous summer. They even stopped for dinner at her favorite restaurant, a delightful Muggle restaurant that looked like a rainforest inside.   
By the next morning, Rose felt sure she’d dodged the bullet. Maybe her parents didn’t know they were supposed to get her grades, after all, she was a first year and their oldest child. Things might have changed since they were in school. Yes, that was it. They might ask her how she’d done, but she would just have to lie to them. She wasn’t particularly comfortable lying to her parents, but she would still rather lie a million times than admit to her failure.   
Feeling cautiously optimistic, Rose bounded down the stairs to the kitchen where her father was making breakfast for her and Hugo before he had to leave for the shop. Her mother was, as usual, already at work. Rose sat down at the little breakfast table, across from Hugo, who had set the table for the three of them.  
“Catch, Hugo!” called their father, flipping a pancake all the way across the kitchen. Hugo picked up his plate and skillfully snagged the pancake out of midair. Rose giggled.  
“Your turn, Rosie,” Ron announced a few minutes later, and Rose, slightly out of practice after the year away, missed. Before the pancake could hit the ground, however, Ron snapped his fingers and it flew back up to land on her plate. Hugo continued eating, seeming not to notice or care, but, having spent a year formally learning magic, Rose looked at her father with new eyes.  
“You didn’t even use a wand!” she said. “I never noticed before.”  
Her father winked, and shortly joined them at the table with pancakes of his own, and eggs and sausage in a ceramic serving dish that Aunt Luna had given them two Christmases ago, decorated with an image of a Crumple-Horned Snorkack.   
“So, Rosie,” he said conversationally. “I seem to have noticed we haven’t gotten your term results yet.”  
Rose’s stomach dropped to her feet, and she could feel her ears heating up. “Oh. Haven’t you? How… how strange.”  
“Isn’t it?” Professor McGonagall is excellent about such things. I can’t imagine she forgot to send them out.”  
“Well,” Rose said desperately, “I suppose… She’s getting older… Maybe her memory is starting to—”  
“Maybe,” interrupted her father. “But I would hate to think you were slandering one of the greatest witches in Hogwarts history because you had done away with your results for some reason.”  
“I—I would never—I wasn’t even here when the results arrived,” Rose said quickly, realizing her mistake a fraction of a second too late.  
“So, they did in fact arrive, then?” Ron asked. “Curious.” His eyes fell on Hugo, who was staring at his plate with such concentration that he might have been trying to divine the future from his sausages.   
The game was up, and Rose knew it. “Oh, it wasn’t his fault,” she said, dropping her eyes to her plate, too, ashamed of herself. “I told him to do it.”  
“And why would you do such a thing?” Ron inquired.  
“Because… well…” Rose hesitated. She was loathe to disappoint him, but she couldn’t see any way around it. “I very nearly failed History of Magic,” she said finally, looking up at her father defiantly. “I suppose I don’t have Mum’s brains after all, because I’m at the bottom of the class in History of Magic.”  
To her astonishment, her father began to laugh. “Oh, Rosie, never you mind. Brains on their own won’t help you there. Your mum had some sort of superpower to stay awake during that class, must have been, because Binns is the most boring professor in the entire history of magic.” He looked quite pleased with his pun, and Rose couldn’t help but giggle. “You say you very nearly failed? Well, then, you passed, and when it comes down to it, Rosie, that’s what counts. You can give it up after fifth year. Useless subject.”  
Rose was fairly certain her mother would heartily object to this reasoning if she were present, but she felt comforted nevertheless.   
“I suppose I should tell you both off for trying to hide it from us,” Ron mused, looking back and forth between his children. “But Hugo, you were trying to help your sister, and I can’t tell you off for that.”  
“I only did it because she promised me Pepper Imps,” Hugo confessed, and Ron chuckled.   
“And Rose, I wish you didn’t think you had to hide your results. You’re a very bright girl, but you’re allowed to have an off exam—or several. You’re capable of great things, you both are,” he added, indicating Hugo as well. “Your lessons are important, but they aren’t everything. I failed my History of Magic O.W.L., and so did Uncle Harry. We never even got our N.E.W.T.s, and we’re still doing alright.” He grinned at them. “Don’t go telling your mum that I say you can drop out. I wouldn’t advise it. You two aren’t internationally famous like we are, so you should probably stick it out. But don’t stress, Rosie. It’ll be alright, and we won’t think any less of you if you tell us these things.”  
“Thanks, Dad,” Rose said. A great weight seemed to have lifted off her shoulders, even though she was still tinged with disappointment… She had wanted to be top in every class, just like her mother. But then she thought of something that cheered her up. “Scorpius Malfoy wasn’t even top of the class in History of Magic, Dad. It was Albus. And I beat them both in all our other classes.”  
“Excellent!” Ron said cheerfully. “I knew you had it in you.”


End file.
